Gaming & Culture —

GDC: crushing skulls with Age of Conan

Funcom's Age of Conan is definitely shaping up to be a unique contender in the …

It was strange sitting down in a closed-door session with the latest build of Funcom's Age of Conan. It's only the first day of GDC, but already one of my most anticipated meetings has arrived. The hands-on session showcased a variety of the game's newly-unveiled features, including mounted combat, high-level dungeon crawling, and the city siege system.

Game director Gaute Godager walked us through the title. With frequent references to "crushing skulls" being a requisite feature, Godager made it extremely clear that the game was designed from the ground up for a more mature audience. Decapitations were horrific and frequent, and blood spilled from corpses with each swing of a tree trunk.

The game's combat system involves unique attack controls. Rather than having just one straight attack button, each player has three possible directions from which any one attack can be launched: left, right, and middle. With a sword, for example, you can either slash from the left, slash from the right, or thrust forward. These different directional attacks are combined with spells or special attacks to form combos, which reward extra damage for stringing together the moves in a specific sequence.

The action-oriented offense is combined with a defense system that gives you three "shields" to work with. These shields can be allocated to any of the three directions, each affording a certain amount of resilience to an attack from that direction. For example, stacking all three shields to the left would give you excellent defense from attacks coming from the left but leave you vulnerable on the other sides.

This can be changed in real time and makes PVP quite a skill-based affair. Certain trademark attacks for each class will have specific zones that are effective, and learning what to expect and how to defend properly will separate strong PVP players from the pack.

PVP is made even more interesting by the inclusion of mounted combat. Unlike other popular games, mounts in Conan all have significant differences and can be used in combat. We were shown a horse that players could attack with their weapon, as well as a war rhino and war mammoth that could attack foes with horns and tusks, respectively.

The staff made it clear that this would translate into some amazing PVP battles, but that mounts could be a hindrance as much as a help: good archers and lancers can and will have their way with careless riders.

The last showpiece was the large siege engine that plays a pivotal role in end-game guild content. Once a guild has become extremely powerful and rich, a town can be built anywhere in the world of Conan. All the amenities of normal towns become available to the guild. But there's more too it then just having a home base. Towns can be besieged by opposing guilds, and players will need to meticulously design their walls to withstand such attacks.

A variety of different towers and gates were built in front of our eyes: the team of five players moved about the space as buildings began to construct themselves like a zoomed-in RTS game.

Though the feature list is staggering and there are some good ideas in the mix, it's going to take some serious work for Funcom to be able to make a dent in the MMO market. Age of Conan is quickly nearing its May 20 release, and with under four months to go, there's still plenty of work to be done. Though the graphics look sharp, combat feels a little sloppy and crude. And, given the complexity of the game, it's hard to say whether the plethora of big ideas can be melded together with finesse. I'm definitely excited to play the game, but my expectations have been toned down a tad.